Sweden Becoming Less Friendly To File Sharing

from the all-that-lobbying-pays-off dept

Despite having politicians who seem to actually understand the real issues at stake surrounding file sharing (hint: it's not a legal problem having to do with "pirates"), it appears that some in the country are getting fed up with the entertainment industry trying to portray Sweden as a "haven for pirates" thanks to the Pirate Bay (which isn't even hosted in Sweden any more). Earlier this year charges were filed against The Pirate Bay, even though it's still not clear if they actually violated any laws. And, now, some Swedish politicians are saying that ISPs should be required to cough up the information of those accused of sharing files. Oddly, this comes so soon after the EU decided that IP addresses are private info and variousothercountries in Europe have ruled that ISPs shouldn't hand over info, as user privacy is much more important than propping up the entertainment industry's business model.

The entertainment industry should stop bitching. Maybe with the loss of sales, American musicians will produce songs with the motivation not being Money, but heart and soul, the foundations of real music.

Re: IP Addresses are private info?

True, who owns a house at a street address is public record but who might be renting it is not. Same with IP addresses that we sublet from our ISP who have themselves leased them from yet another party.

Could be a different reason

You wrote "... it appears that some in the country are getting fed up with the entertainment industry trying to portray Sweden as a "haven for pirates" thanks to the Pirate Bay ...".

I'd say that it is much more likely that the reason for these politicians' actions is that someone has been threatening trade retaliation, or something similar, rather than that the politicians are getting fed up with their beloved Sweden being called a haven for pirates. Seems to me that Sweden has been called nasty names many times in the past, and it didn't bother them much then. Or were you just making a little joke?

If some arm-twisting is going on, it would be good to publicize the details, in the interests of publicly shaming the bully. I realize you might not know the details at the moment.

Why do you people get so excited by privacy? Everyone knows that you people are "the public" and therefore you have no right to privacy. Only us in the government have a right to privacy because information would let our enemies know what we are doing, and we can't have that, so we keep everything secret.

Now go back to your TV and watch American Idle and stop asking questions.

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